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Wednesday, 4 April 2012

Final Major Project: Game Sencerio Design

It had been a while since Will and I had sat down and talked extensively about the direction we wanted to take Gutsy in and I believe it would be fair to say that in terms of the game design, we know what we want but details are hazy as it's the first time either of us had tackled something of this size.

We knew what the story was going to be about and the basic idea of what this game level should be but we had began to add other ideas to enhance the experience for the such as the inclusion of items and picks. So we did the only thing we could do, Spend a whole morning just setting in stone the elements of the core gameplay. By the end of it we came out with a list of features and how things should work that we could both agree on that we felt would work best for Gutsy.

Translated from my little notebook I keep on me when Will and I meet for talks about Gutsy's Quest, below are the parameters of the gameplay of Gutsy's Quest.

The Objective of the game: Players control Sir Gutsy, The bravest knight of the kingdom, they must defeat as many Skeletons as possible to get a high score. Items can be found in crates in barrels that will boost the players score. The game ends when Gutsy's Health reduces to zero. As time progresses enemies appear more frequently and more numerously on the screen.

Items, what they do and where they can be found:

Coins: Adds 10 points to the player's score, they're found in 70% of the Barrels and Boxes and dropped by 40% of dead enemies.

Ruby: Adds 50 points to the player's score, they're found in 30% of the Barrels and Boxes and dropped by 10% of dead enemies.

Crown: Adds 100 points to the player's score. There's only one found in a level and dropped randomly by a dead character.

Heart: Give a character one full heart of health, they're found in 30% of the Barrels and Boxes and dropped by 20% of dead enemies.

(Enemies are worth 30 points standard).

All items (bar the crown) can be found in breakable Barrels and Boxes that spawn randomly around the level with the max amount being five in the level at any time. When one is destroyed it will respawn in a new location 30 seconds later.

We felt that with this short piece of guidelines we've finally established all parts of the conceptual side of Gutsy's Quest and that we now have a full view of what this game should have in it. This has helped us fill in the gaps of our conceptual/design sections and what pieces of code we'll have to find.

These small meetings every Monday between Will and I can make huge changes and steps forward in the development of the project and we feel by putting aside a specific time to swap data and ideas it gives us a week to try impress each other with our work and by keeping notes we can keep track of the changes or new ideas we come up with. This process works incredibly well for the two of us as we're very much shared in the ideals of attitude towards work in terms of "get on and do it". With Gutsy's conceptual side finalised and many of the designs done it's time to move onto the production stage, next week there's an intrim crit so we will be preparing for that but I firmly believe we will finally be moving onto the modelling stage.